Then ...

(Reprinted from the issue of May 31, 2007)

Thomas
Jefferson, composing his own tombstone inscription, didnt
see fit to mention his presidency among the three chief achievements of his
life. Imagine what he would think of todays obsession with the office,
which has become, in effect, a seriously corrupted monarchy.

The modest
executive role envisioned by the Framers of the U.S. Constitution now seems
incomprehensibly quaint, and in the age of mass democracy,
so does the constitutional method of electing them. The idea that the
Electoral College should actually decide who shall be president strikes most
Americans as so absurd that they never even bother to ask why it ever
made sense.

The reason, of
course, is precisely that the president was never meant to be a king. These
United States, as Readers Digest still calls them, were
to form a republic, delegating a few specific legislative powers to a Congress
in which the people would elect one house and the state governments would
appoint the other. Most actual power would remain with the people and the
states; the president and the federal courts  particularly the federal
Supreme Court  would make few if any fateful decisions.

The great horror of
Americans in that age was consolidated (i.e., centralized)
government. The presidency would be more an honor than a position of real
power. It should hardly matter who held the office. It was so weak that there
was no reason to fight very hard for it, or to spend much money campaigning
for it; nor was there any reason to worry about assassination, since the
stakes were so low. Presidents didnt have to worry about their
personal safety. They were more concerned with their personal honor. Even
in Lincolns day any man on the street could still walk into the White
House and ask the president himself for a job!

The original system
was so different from todays that the most lucid explication of it, in
the Federalist Papers, has become puzzling to read, like a
medieval treatise on alchemy. Its basic terms  consolidated,
delegated, usurpation, confederacy,
sovereignty, and so forth  form a language alien to us. Even
Lincoln hardly understood them.

The original design
began to unravel very early, as party politics, abhorrent (in principle, at
least) to the Framers, emerged. Later Lincoln denied and then destroyed the
sovereignty of the states, on which everything depended. The damage was
compounded by amendments that virtually repealed what was left of the
original Constitution, and it is almost nonsense, now, to speak of
strict construction. To hear this phrase from a Rudy Giuliani
is beyond all irony.

The 22nd
Amendment, limiting the president to two terms, should have been entirely
unnecessary; it was a desperate reaction (and a pathetically futile one)
against the hypertrophy of the office by Franklin Roosevelts time.
Neither the people nor the states are sovereign now; subject to a few
vestigial limitations, the president is. The original American republic is gone
irrecoverably.
... And Now

The foregoing was meant to be a
brief prologue to some reflections on the 2008 presidential campaign,
already as far advanced as a terminal case of bone cancer. Im afraid
my exasperation got the better of me.

The latest wrinkle in
this mess is the news that New Yorks Mayor Michael Bloomberg may
be about to enter the race as an independent, financing his run with one of
his own spare billions.

Last week I offered a
hopeful scenario for next year, with Ron Paul running and winning as a
third-party candidate, the lone conservative against two liberal nominees offered
by the major parties. It could happen, but so could this: The Democrats run
Hillary, the Republicans run Giuliani, and Bloomberg runs too. That would give
the voters a real choice: three pro-abortion, pro-war, pro-homosexual New
York white liberals. I suppose this is a liberals idea of diversity. As Bill
Clinton used to say, Diversity is our greatest strength.

With Giuliani running,
Bloomberg would seem superfluous. The only difference between them is
that Bloomberg isnt a Catholic and doesnt pretend to hate
abortion, which makes him, I guess, ever so slightly preferable. Among these
three, Hillary should win. (The ballyhooed Barack Obama, glib but wispy, is
already fading.)

In that case, though,
a principled conservative like Paul might win as a =fourth=-party candidate
(the Constitution Party?), for whom the glut of liberals would surely create a
furious demand. The possibilities are endless. No use trying to predict which
way this ball would carom.
Rudys Roar

In the second Republican debate,
Phony Rudy had the sort of big demagogic moment that usually
wins these sorry contests. When Paul remarked that the 9/11 attacks were
the result of U.S. meddling in the Middle East, a thought that had occurred to
me before the second tower fell, Giuliani erupted in hypocritical outrage. The
South Carolina Republican audience applauded wildly, and the Fox pundits
scored it a triumph for Rudy. Other Republicans wanted Paul expelled from
the party for blasphemy.

But much of the
post-debate reaction favored Paul. Genuine conservatives recognized one of
their own. Pat Buchanan spoke for many when he praised the honest Texan.
The Republican Party should indeed kick him out; it has no room for men like
him.

If Giuliani gets the
Republican nomination next year, he will enjoy the support of the
Compassionate Conservative, George W. Bush. Naturally.
Ecrasez
LInfame

National Public Television has recently
outdone itself with a series of specials on the Inquisition (it
seems there was only one) and Martin Luther, all of them relentlessly,
one-sidedly, and bigotedly anti-Catholic. None of the several I saw made any
serious effort to balance propaganda with any other perspective. It was all a
simple liberal morality tale of Progressive heroes and victims versus
Reactionary villains (i.e., the Church of Rome).

Luthers only
flaws, apparently, were a bit of intolerance (toward those who were even
more Progressive than he was) and anti-Semitism. Well, nobodys
perfect. He was still one of the great emancipators in human
history.

The obvious question
was left hanging: Why on earth does the Catholic Church still exist?



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